‘Felyx. Please look–’
Her voice was almost gone.
‘Stay with me!’ Criid said, trying to get the dressing packed across the head wound.
‘You have children. Don’t let her–’
‘Who? Do you mean Yoncy? What about Yoncy?’
‘Promise me you’ll look after Felyx. Protect Felyx.’
‘What? Stay with me!’
‘Promise me.’
‘I promise.’
Maddalena blinked again.
‘Good, then,’ she said. And was gone.
Fifteen: Staff
Gaunt followed Biota through the halls of the Urdeshic Palace. The tactician seemed little inclined to speak further.
There were guards posted at every corner and doorway: Urdeshi in full colours, Narmenians with chrome breastplates and power staves, Keyzon siege-men in heavy armour. The fortress was pale stone and draughty. Footsteps echoed, and the wind murmured in the empty halls. Walls had been stripped of paintings, and floors of carpets. Rush matting and thermal-path runners had been laid down to line thoroughfares. The old galvanic lighting had been removed and replaced with lumen globes.
Biota swept down a long, curved flight of stone steps, and threw open the doors of a long undercroft with a ribbed stone roof. The undercroft was full of men, standing in informal huddles, talking. They all looked around and glared as the doors opened.
Biota didn’t break stride, walking the length of the chamber towards the double doors at the far end without giving the men a second glance.
Gaunt followed him. He was aware of the eyes on him. The men, in a wide variety of Astra Militarum uniforms that generally featured long dark storm coats or cloaks, watched him as he walked past. There were a hundred or more, and not a single one of them below the rank of general or field commander. By a considerable margin, Gaunt was the lowest ranking person in the room.
Biota reached the end doors. Made of weighty metal, of ornate design, they were decorated with etched steel and elaborate gilt fixtures. Gaunt reflected that they were probably one of the fortress’ original features, ancient doors that had felt the knock of kings, and seen the passing of dynast chieftains and sector lords. It was better, he felt, to reflect on that notion than on the thought of the combined authority of the eyes watching him fiercely.
Biota knocked once, then opened the left-hand door. Gaunt smelt the smoke of lho-sticks and cigars. He entered as Biota beckoned him, and then realised that Biota had shut the door behind him without following.
The chamber was large, and draped in wall-hangings and battle standards, some fraying with age and wear. A draught was coming from somewhere, fluttering the naked flames of torches set in black metal tripods around the circumference of the room. In the dancing glow, Gaunt could see the inscriptions on the wall, proclaiming this chamber to be the war room of the Collegia Bellum Urdeshi.
The floors were a gloss black stone that contrasted with the paler stone of the rest of the old fortress. They were covered in lists, lists etched in close-packed lines and then infilled with hammered gold wire. Legends of battle, military campaigns, rolls of honour.
There was a vast semicircular table in the centre of the room, its straight edge facing him and the door. The table was wooden, and looked as if it was a half-section of a single tree trunk, lacquered and varnished to a deep gleaming brown. A cluster of lumen globes hovered over it. Above them, in a ring around the table space, twenty small cyberskulls floated in position, their eyes glowing green, their sculpted silver faces mumbling and chattering quietly.
Thirty people sat at the table around the curved side. They were all staring at him. A thirty-first seat stood, vacant, at the centre of them.
Gaunt recognised them all. Their ranks and power, at least. Some he knew by pict and file reports, some from commissioned paintings. Some he knew personally. To the left, Grizmund, his old ally from Verghast, now a full lord general by the braid on his collar and sleeves. Grizmund nodded a curt greeting to Gaunt.
‘Step forward, Bram,’ said Van Voytz, with a casual gesture. He had a cigar clenched in the fist that beckoned, and the smoke rose in a lazy yellow haze through the lumen glow, reminding Gaunt of the creep of toxin gas on battlefields. Van Voytz was sitting to the left of the vacant chair.
Gaunt stepped forwards, facing the straight edge of the table. He took off his cap, tucked it under his arm, and made the sign of the aquila.
‘Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt of the Tanith First, returned to us,’ said Van Voytz.
A murmur ran around the table.
‘The Emperor protects,’ said Lord Militant Cybon. ‘I am heartened to see your safe delivery, Gaunt.’
Gaunt glanced at the massive, augmeticised warlord. Cybon’s haggard face, braced with bionic artifice, was deadpan. Torch light glinted off the jet carrion-bird emblems at his throat.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Gaunt said.
‘It’s been a while,’ said Lord General Bulledin, broad and grey-bearded. ‘A while indeed. Monthax, was it?’
‘Just prior to Hagia, I believe, lord.’
‘Ah, Hagia,’ said Bulledin with a dark chuckle. The chuckle was echoed by others at the table.
‘Things work out for the best, in the end,’ said another lord general further around the semicircle. Bulledin glanced his way.
‘You’re living testament to that, my friend,’ he said archly.
The man he was speaking to simpered some retort as if it were all barrack room banter. Gaunt glanced his way. He saw that the man was Lugo. He stiffened. Lugo looked older, much older, than he had the last time Gaunt had seen him, as if age had sandblasted him. He wore the rich brocade of a lord militant general, perhaps the most showy of the various uniforms in the room. A lord general again, Gaunt thought. Times have moved on.
‘You have a report for us, Bram,’ said Van Voytz.
‘I have, sir,’ said Gaunt. He took his encrypted data-slate from his pocket. ‘If you’re all ready to receive.’
‘We are,’ said Cybon. He lifted a wand to alter the setting of the cyberskulls. They began to whirr and murmur, erecting a crypto-field that insulated the chamber from all prying eyes, ears and sensors. Gaunt activated the slate, and forwarded his confidential report to the data machines in the room. The lord generals took out or picked up their various devices. Some began to read.
‘A personal summary, I think, Bram,’ said Van Voytz, ignoring his own data-slate, which lay beside his ashtray on the table.
‘By order of high command,’ said Gaunt, ‘specifically the authority of Lord Militant General Cybon and Lord Commissar Mercure of the Officio Prefectus, my regiment departed Balhaut in 781 relative. Target destination was an Archenemy manufacturing base in the Rimworld Marginals.’
‘Salvation’s Reach,’ said Bulledin.
‘Indeed, sir,’ said Gaunt. ‘The objective was threefold. To neutralise the enemy’s manufacturing capacity, to retrieve, where possible, data and materials for examination, and to create prejudicial disinformation that would destabilise the enemy host.’
‘Of which,’ said Cybon, ‘the third was the most particular. The Reach mission was part of a greater programme of false flag operations.’
‘This devised,’ said Bulledin, ‘by you, Cybon, and by Mercure?’
‘And sanctioned by the warmaster,’ replied Cybon. ‘But the germ of the notion came from Gaunt.’
‘By way of an enemy combatant,’ said Lugo. He glanced at Gaunt, his eyes glittering. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? There was a high-value enemy asset involved?’
Gaunt cleared his throat. He had a feeling he knew which way this could turn.
‘A high-value asset is only high value if that value is used, sir,’ he replied. ‘The enemy officer had surrendered to our forces. A change of heart. He had been one of us, originally. He offered information.’